Resource Type

The field "Type" in the Resource Metadata Exchange Agreement is derived primarily from the DublinCore type vocabulary , but extended to suit the specific needs of the project:

• Provider: (This is required a single time to represent your organization/institution.)
• Collection: (This is required at least once to represent a resource collection. All individual resources should be grouped into collections. The collections may be used to express common information, many metadata are inherited from the collection to individual resources)
• StillImage: A normal, non-moving image (preferred formats are png and jpg)
• Sound: A sound recording
• MovingImage: A video
• Map: A map. The format may be an image, PDF, a web page, a dynamic service, etc.
• TaxonPage: A resource (html, pdf, etc.) describing a species or other taxon as free-form text, optionally enriched with images or other rich media content (subtype of http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text).
• GlossaryPage: A resource (html, pdf, etc.) giving a definition or explanation of descriptive terms (parts, stages, char., states, etc.) as free-form text, optionally enriched with images or other rich media content (subtype of http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text).
• Text: Any other form of text / mixed media and text document, that is neither a TaxonPage, nor a GlossaryPage (= http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text).
• IdentificationTool: A document (e. g., in pdf format), data set, or software with embedded data, that may be used to identify organisms or other entities (parts, diseases, etc.). The various types of keys are specified in separate metadata fields.
• DescriptiveDataset: A data set that is not already listed as part of an identification tool. Of special interest are those data sets that are used to generate specific identification tools, but are not made available themselves.
• VernacularNameDataset: A list of vernacular (= common) names, possibly in multiple languages. NOTE: please treat the entire list as a single resource annotating number of taxa and taxon coverage; the detailed data will be exchanged at a later time.
• SynonymDataset: A list of scientific (= “Latin”) names with synonyms. NOTE: please treat the entire list as a single resource annotating number of taxa and taxon coverage; the detailed data will be exchanged at a later time.
• Dataset: Other data sets that do not fit the specific data set categories: DescriptiveDataset, VernacularNameDataset, SynonymDataset
• Software: Any software (A computer program in source or compiled form) that may be of relevance to the project and is distributed independently of an IdentificationTool.
• Service: A general service. Use “IdentificationTool” for specific identification services.
• InteractiveResource: An online-resource that can only be experienced by interacting with it. Typical examples are query/search pages for synonym or common name lookup. Use “IdentificationTool” for interactive identification services.

Deprecated values:

• UnicodeQC: (Fixed value. This is required a single time in each data exchange.) Only for table-based exchange, not necessary for wiki-based exchange

Note: Taxon or species pages (resource type: “TaxonPage”) usually contains text plus media like images (“StillImage”). If possible, it would be highly desirable if you could provide both the taxon page resource and URIs for the individual images.

Other acceptable terms include:

• Event: metadata for an event provides descriptive information that is the basis for discovery of the purpose, location, duration, and responsible agents associated with an event. Examples include an exhibition, webcast, conference, workshop, open day, performance.(type http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Event )
• Image: a visual representation other than text. Image may include both electronic and physical representations. Broader then StillImage or MovingImage, please use those instead of Image, when this is possible(type http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Image).
• Physical Object: an inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Image, Text or one of the other types (type http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/PhysicalObject).

Additional comments on definitions

“Identification tool”: In the Key to Nature consortium the term is defined as the combination of an identification data set and a software application to use it. An identification tool allows the identification of an organism within a given group, for a defined area, in a defined season, etc. Examples are "Key to the butterflies of the XY National Park", “Winter key to European Shrubs”, or “British poisonous plants”. Key to Nature limits it scope to digital identification tools, which may exist in a wide range of types, from complex interactive tools to simple HTML pages or PDF documents.

Normally, an identification tool will include the necessary software to use it (in contrast to a descriptive dataset). However, the software application does not need to be provided directly, if it is typically found on the targeted hardware system (e. g., JAVA or .NET virtual machines, web browsers, PDF readers) or if a link is provided where a tools can be downloaded free of charge.

Identification tools may or may not be specific to different hardware. Where tools are provided in different versions for different hardware (e. g. PDA or mobile phones), these may be considered different resources. Capturing the relation between such variants of tools is desirable; it may be achieved by considering one tool to be derived from the other (field “Derived From”). – If the same text and image content is provided for different hardware (perhaps with automatic image sizing to available screen space, adaptations for grayscale screen, modes for people with disabilities, etc.), this may be considered a single tool. The field “ Target System” may then contain a Multi-valued list of systems like “Mac; WinXP; Win2k3; Vista; PDA”.

(Note on other uses of the term: Software applications developed to identify organism using externally stored data (Intkey, Lucid, Palmkey, etc.) are often also called “identification tools” as a generic category, rather than as the specific product.)

“Identification data set”: In most identification tools the software application is general and can be combined with different data sets. These data sets contain the knowledge required to identify biological entities (organisms, diseases, symbioses, etc.) within a specific scope (taxonomic, geographical, ecological, seasonal, etc.).

Different types of data sets formats can be distinguished: The original knowledge base used by the editing application (“builder”), a transformed format, “compiled” or “optimized” for the identification tool (“player”), and a document-like presentation format directly suitable for display in web browsers or other readers software. For example, DELTA, SDD, Lucid LIF or Xper2 are knowledge-base formats, the Intkey or Lucid player format is a compiled format for specific software, and FRIDA keys, SLIKS/SAIKS keys are presentation documents. Depending on the software, the production of an identification tools may involve different data formats or all steps may be present, key software may run directly on a knowledge base (Xper2, Navikey), or all functions may be rolled into a single format (as in SLIKS/SAIKS).

Where a knowledge base is not or only incompletely published as part of an identification tool, it is desirable to report the knowledge base as a resource of type “DescriptiveDataset”.